Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Wales: A Way And A Warning

In 2012 we noted the Welsh Government’s plans to create a powerful,
integrated environmental body.Those
plans took effect in April 2013 with the launch of Natural Resources Wales.

NRW is the end result of a long process of bringing together
powers that were once spread very thinly.Forty years ago, those powers belonged to no fewer than seven different
authorities or types of authority:

the
Countryside Commission (based in London)
dealt with landscape and recreation

the
Forestry Commission (based in London)
dealt with forestry

HM
Factory Inspectorate (based in London)
dealt with air pollution

local
councils dealt with waste disposal

the
Nature Conservancy (based in London)
dealt with wildlife

river
authorities dealt with fisheries, land drainage and water pollution (Wales had
seven)

the
Welsh Office (based in Cardiff, but
actually run from London)
dealt with the farmed environment

Now, for the first time, one organisation can look at the environment
in Wales
as a whole, in a joined-up way.It still
has to deal with cross-border issues, but it has no single English
equivalent.It will go on dealing with four
separate bodies (the Environment Agency, the Forestry Commission, Natural
England, and parts of DEFRA).Could they
be similarly unified?Well, yes, and it
has been talked about, but given the size of England the resulting organisation
would be a nightmare of administrative complexity.It could only work effectively through a
network of regional offices, in touch with events on the ground, and this
Coalition really doesn’t like doing regions.The Welsh example isn’t exactly replicable for England.It is
replicable for Wessex.

The Welsh environment is a precious heritage, pivotal to
defining what Wales
is culturally.For us, the Wessex
environment should be viewed as no less precious and pivotal.Yet under the London regime it isn’t deemed worthy of the
same integrated approach to ensuring its protection.Given the pressure from London for endless overspill housing, that’s
a catastrophe in the making.

Wales
then is worthy of study, and often emulation.But let’s not jump to the conclusion that all’s well west of the Severn.Some of
the devolved choices made haven’t worked out, with education and health
policies in Wales
coming in for some sustained criticism.

Most importantly, Wales,
unlike Scotland,
has failed to grasp what an opportunity devolution is to really do politics
differently.It remains governed by a
Labour Party that ultimately answers not to Wales but to Ed Miliband in
London.Plaid Cymru, having led the
campaign for self-government over the past century, can only sit and watch the
opportunity slip away.

It is when Labour implements policies that are no different
from the Coalition’s that you see how the promise of devolution has been
subverted.Take the Planning Bill,
published in December.Launching the
Bill, housing and regeneration minister Carl Sargeant said that the Welsh planning
system needs to be repositioned from regulating development to enabling appropriate
development.He could have been quoting
Osborne or Pickles.Regulatory capture
again: forcing the regulators to act as cheerleaders for the industry and to
ask no questions.In a typical piece of
Labour nonsense, detailed rules are to be prescribed for delegating decisions
to council officers, to avoid ‘inconsistency’ (as Labour describes local
democratic choice).The Welsh Government
also wants to regulate the size of planning committees (no fewer than 11 nor
more than 21 members) and the procedures they follow.Has it really nothing better to do?Does it understand decentralisation and
localism any better than the Coalition?It appears to understand them less.

Last month, just to demonstrate how far the plot has been
lost, the Welsh Government revealed plans to plunge local government in Wales
into its third comprehensive reorganisation in 40 years.County councils like Anglesey and
Pembrokeshire, restored in 1996 after a 22-year gap, are now set to vanish
again after little more than 17.Cutting
the number of councils in Wales by half or more will also mean fewer
councillors, less scrutiny of decision-making and more power for the
bureaucracy.Meanwhile, since key
services like police remain non-devolved in Wales, any talk of a better
integrated public sector will continue to come up against constraints imposed
by the London regime. You can blame the Tories under John Redwood for the 1996 reorganisation - and its failure to ask how, if at all, this would fit a devolved Wales - but you can blame all three main London parties for still not answering the question of what shape devolution will ultimately obtain.

Wales shows how devolution can mean better governance.It also shows how, left in the hands of
Labour, devolution can fail to deliver its full potential.Constitutional change is a necessary step
towards political change but it is not a sufficient step.Real change comes only with a willingness to
reject the London parties at the ballot box.